Vietnam

Vietnam: capital Hanoi, population 101.6M, area 331,212 km². The 16th most populous country, in Asia. Facts, map, neighbours and more.

Vietnam stretches from the Red River Delta to the Mekong, with a long coast between mountains and the sea. Its historical layers include river battles, imperial capitals, Cham sanctuaries and merchant ports. Water puppetry, ca trù singing, áo dài tailoring and a 29-letter tonal alphabet give those layers forms that remain immediately recognisable.

• At the Bạch Đằng River in 938, Ngô Quyền used a field of concealed wooden stakes to defeat Southern Han forces and end centuries of northern rule.
• Emperor Lý Thái Tổ moved the capital from Hoa Lư to Đại La in 1010 and renamed it Thăng Long, beginning Hanoi's millennium as a capital.
• The Nguyễn dynasty ruled unified Vietnam from Gia Long's accession in 1802 until Bảo Đại's abdication on 25 August 1945, a span of 143 years.
• French Indochina was created in 1887 by grouping Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina and Cambodia; Laos entered the federation six years later.

• Nguyễn Du shaped The Tale of Kiều as 3,254 lines of lục bát verse, alternating six- and eight-syllable lines in a story still quoted in conversation.
• Pianist Đặng Thái Sơn won Warsaw's International Chopin Piano Competition in 1980, becoming the first competitor from Asia to take its first prize.
• Ngô Bảo Châu received the 2010 Fields Medal for proving the fundamental lemma in the Langlands programme, the first Vietnamese national awarded the medal.
• Trần Anh Hùng's first feature, The Scent of Green Papaya, received the Caméra d'Or at Cannes in 1993 and later earned an Academy Award nomination.

• Hạ Long Bay covers about 1,553 square kilometres and contains 1,969 islands and islets; its 334-square-kilometre core alone holds 775 limestone formations.
• Hang Sơn Đoòng formed in limestone 2 to 5 million years ago and contains the largest known cave passage by volume, with its own river and clouds.
• Mỹ Sơn's valley once held more than 70 brick and stone temples built by Champa rulers between the fourth and thirteenth centuries.
• Hội An preserves more than 1,000 timber buildings within a trading port that linked Chinese, Japanese and European merchants from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries.

• Water puppetry arose in Red River Delta villages by the eleventh century; lacquered wooden figures move across a waist-deep pool on rods hidden below the surface.
• The Vietnamese alphabet has 29 letters, including seven modified letterforms, while five additional diacritics mark the language's six tones.
• A ca trù performance pairs a female singer's phách clappers with a three-string đàn đáy lute; UNESCO placed the form on its urgent-safeguarding list in 2009.
• Designer Nguyễn Cát Tường introduced the fitted, two-panel Le Mur áo dài in the 1930s, reshaping older five-panel garments into the modern silhouette.

What is the capital of Vietnam?

The capital of Vietnam is Hanoi.

What is the population of Vietnam?

Vietnam has about 101.6M people — the 16th most populous country in the world.

How big is Vietnam?

Vietnam covers 331,212 km², making it the 66th largest country by area.

Which region is Vietnam in?

Vietnam is in South-Eastern Asia, Asia.